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Hey MJD! Where would HOMECOMING: The Live Album be classified?
The Orphan Album section? Or using your usual greatest hits method where each track is added to the parent album it comes from?
Hi Chartmasters crew, thank you for this amazing article. I was wondering if you have any data on African sales and how Beyonce ranks among foreign artists there. I know on her heatmap many African countries were among her best and I have heard she is very succesful there and was wondering how she compared to her peers, local and all-time bestselling acts. Any help would be appreciated thanks.
I dont think its possible, bcoz if im not mistaken many African coubtries doesnt even have a music body. So her sales are probably not properly recorded. But as u have mentioned, she must have been really2 huge in Africa. I guess its easier for R&B acts to break into African markets compared to Pop acts.
Hi MJD,
I'm a big fan of Beyoncé, and despite of your explanation, I'm having an extremely hard time making sense of her digital singles sales. Take the 'Irreplaceable' case: if its US sales stand now at 3.7 million, the ratio between her alleged worldwide sales to US sales is 3. This is an usually high ratio for a single that was prominently bigger in the US than in the rest of the world. The matter gets trickier when we analyze her IASF figures. There is no reliable source that backs the huge numbers reported for 'If I Were A Boy', 'Single Ladies' and 'Halo'. Out of those 3, only SL made the IFPI top 10 in 2009, with a very modest sum of 4,7 million. We know that 'Halo' is a monster recurrent hit and SL had its share of appreciation throughout the years, but to get to the numbers mentioned here these songs would have to sell in their recurrent years 2x the amount they sold at their prime, which is highly unlikely.
From a quick review, 'Crazy In Love' and 'Listen' also show inexplicable big numbers.
My estimate is that her digital sales figures are overestimated by at least 50%.
What do you think?
Hi Robinson!
As western chart followers we have the bad habit of looking at western download charts only when it comes to digital sales. For album sales, it made sense, North America and Europe often represented well over 80% of sales for international artists. Downloads never took off in continental Europe though, they remained somehow weak in the UK too. And then, there are ringtones, which sold a whole lot more than downloads in many markets.
Irreplaceable did 3.7m in the US, but that's with downloads only. It sold the same number in ringtones, a total of 7.4m US sales, two thirds of the global total. IIWAB is over 4m combined in the US and over a million in Japan and South Korea combined. These countries bring a lot more sales than our usual checks of markets like France or Italy. Halo is at 5.2m in the US and 2.9 million in SK alone. Here too, people will tend to look at the 4.1m US DLs, missing the remaining 4m from these two countries.
Halo did 200,000 units in SK in 2009 out of its near 3 million total. DLs were still in their early stages in years 2006-2009 in many countries, unlike the US, so multiplying the initial sales by 3 or more isn't a surprise, many songs did that. The market in 2012 was over 2 times bigger than in 2006 in the US (1.34b vs 582m), but in Australia for example, it grew by 1000% (from 10.3m to 110m).
Crazy In Love is at 1.25m ringtones, 1m Japanese digital sales and over half a million in SK. Listen did 1.5m units in the latter country alone.
All the singles you mention appear to come from her early years, because ringtones were ridiculously big back then and people tend to completely overlook them. They are also her top selling titles in SK. By 2013 the ringtones market had gone in most countries and she got no new hit in SK, so the numbers shown here are likely more in line with your expectations by looking at western downloads.
I know I'm not MJD but I read somewhere it sold 500k units in 2019! 11 years after release! But I think it was because of a commercial it's in. It also just surpassed the 1 billion mark a few years ago so I would like to know too.
As a big Beyonce fan, I know a lot of us know her sales as "DIL 11 M, 8 M for both B'day and IASF, 3 M for 4, 5 M for self-titled and 3 M for Lemonade." Are these numbers just fanciful, from an unreliable source, or updated? I doubt they're updated cuz she hasn't recertified most of her music since 2010.
It's so incredible. One year later a 2009's song accumulated more 200M streams. A iconic classic.
Ok, I see. I fully ignored both her Asian and ringtones figures, so now it makes sense.
By the way, I'd like to say I regard CSPC as the most reliable, comprehensible and well-thought metric for assessing recording artists careers I've come to know. It baffles me that the so-called recording industry insiders and chart organizations still weren't able to come up with a methodology this solid. They're supposed to be the experts, right?
And I can only imagine all the hard work put into collecting and estimating the most reliable figures, taking into account the number of years, releases and consumption medias covered. I always resort to your data when debating with another charts afficionados.
Congratulations from Brazil, and keep up with the great work!
wait so i how would measure for example crazy in love success as a single rather than a eas when it comes to streaming? like how much would it have sold
ipy they are way bigger than the numbers they put and you put. im pretty sure her first 3 albums are ATLEAST 10x plat or diamond in the U.S. id say dil is around 15-16, bday 13-14, iasf 15-17.
as for 4 id say around 7-8, st 7-9, and lemonade is now probably close to 5x, which would ultimately bring her ww stats to top selling especially her first 3 albums. as for 4 and st theyd be lower tier around 60-80 and lemonade had a ways to go but its moving fast since its release on spotify.
Hey MJD what do you make of this 2011 BBC article about a Press Release by Sony regarding Beyoncé’s pure album sales.
It looks like BBC Press is making the claim rather than Sony themselves which is already dubious, but seeing how outlandish the numbers are I’d say it’s very easy to dismiss this as valid.
She sold 75M pure albums according to Sony themselves! https://www.sony.com/en_us/SCA/company-news/press-releases/sony-music-entertainment/2013/the-mrs-carter-show-world-tour-starring-beyonce.html
those are based on her numbers from 7 years ago. and they aren't accurate considering she hasn't updated any of her stats from her first 5 albums in the U.S.
Yep and it’s 75M pure albums with just her first 3 releases. So MJD is way off on his estimation.
Hi Beytingz!
Maybe it's your interpretation of Sony's claim that is way off? Seriously, 75m pure sales for Beyonce's first 3 albums? Come on 😉
Sony are master at changing the subject in the middle of their sentences. Random examples from their reports:
- "Thriller was #1 in the US for 37 weeks [=> one understands it's Thriller, the album itself] and sold 104 million copies [=> then they are mentioning sales of all records containing Thriller]"
- "Baby One More Time went 13xP in the US [=> album alone] and sold 30 million units [=> sales of all records, singles included, during the era]"
- "she has released four #1 solo albums [=> solo albums stats] and has sold over 75 million albums worldwide [=> comprehensive career data, adding the DC's sales]"
All it takes is reading between the lines these marketing tricks.
BTW, for albums as recent as Beyonce's albums, the 'estimation' part is close to null, all figures are backed by official data from the music industry organizations.
If you say it’s with DC when Sony clearly stated solo then that puts her well over 50M solo albums by now and your figures still don’t reflect that? So when will you update her stats?
Sony has faked their artists numbers so many times. For her to sell 75M records with 3 albums, it seems unrealistic, that would be more than 20M per album..
Albums* not records. Faked? That’s a whole press release they did. They have investors to answer to they can’t “fake" albums sales. IFPI also only started reporting on a yearly basis in 2009? And Beyoncé’s album sales were only reported for Lemonade in 2016.
to add, she did those numbers without updating her first 5 albums after 1-2 years of its release. i can see her solidly passing her after a sales update. and as for rihanna she will continue to do well commercially but in sales, she underperforms considering she has been a mainstream artist her whole career.
Because these numbers are unimaginable, according to Nielsen, Beyonce sold around 18 mln pure albums in the US (which accounts for around 50 percent of Beyonce sales), she can't sell 57 mln outside of US (even Adele and Taylor have around 60 and 50 mln pure album sales respectively). So that 75 mln figure is straight-up inaccurate. So it isn't nice to believe in everything you read on the internet. Nielsen and IFPI are the most reliable sources
